


Whiskey Rocks, Sephora Chaser

by oncethrown



Series: Spaces Between [4]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec in Magnus's Clothes, Drunk Alec Lightwood, Drunken Shenanigans, Fluff and Feels, I was sick of writing sad things all the time, M/M, Makeup, playing dress up, soft boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 10:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11273940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncethrown/pseuds/oncethrown
Summary: Magnus and Alec finally have some time to reconnect-- and even have fun-- after a rough couple of weeks in the Shadow World.Magnus talks Alec into dressing up in his clothes and then offers Alec something unexpected.2x13 Reaction Fic





	Whiskey Rocks, Sephora Chaser

Alec sets his hand to Magnus’s waist, opens to his kiss, presses back once, and again, then stops. 

 

“Have you been… drinking?”

 

The question is careful. Magnus’s lips have that crisp alchohol feeling on them and he tastes weird.  Smoky and sticky and distinctly alcoholic. 

 

Magnus pulls back, the tight smile from earlier still on his face. “Dorothea stopped by. We got to reminiscing.” He plucks a glass that Alec didn’t notice from the balcony railing. “Does it bother you?”

 

Alec stops the instinct to purse his lips. “Are you drunk?”

 

“A little buzzed, maybe.” Magnus shrugs and brings the glass back to his lips. “Does it bother you?” he repeats. 

 

Alec shakes his head. Alcohol isn’t really part of Shadowhunter culture the way he knows it is with Mundanes and some groups of downworlders. Given his job, he usually only sees the worst side of drunkeness, but Magnus doesn’t seem drunk like that. 

 

He just seems strange and sad, like he has for days. But the sadness at least seems softer now. 

 

“No,” he finally replies. “As long as you weren’t alone.”

 

Magnus gives him one of his pinched smiles. The kind that makes the skin around his eyes wrinkle just enough to remind Alec that Magnus is not as young as he looks. 

 

With a snap of Magnus’s fingers, a glass appears in Alec’s hand. 

 

“I’m not alone. I’m with you.”

 

Alec sips the drink. It’s sweet, but not cloyingly so. It tastes like fruit and feels like bubbles and Alec wonders if there’s any alcohol in it at all. It doesn’t burn like everything else Magnus has given him. 

 

“So,” Alec says, taking a deeper drink from the glass. “The new look. Is that just umm… this outfit or did you redo you’re entire wardrobe?”

 

The smile he gets in return for that question seems so much more sincere than the last few Magnus has given him, and the little hiccup of warmth in his chest expands outward through his body as Magnus tells him about his jacket. The designer, where he bought it, and the long-ago style it reminds him off. 

 

It’s a relief to have a light conversation again.

* * *

 

 

There is absolutely alcohol in the drink Magnus made him, Alec surmises as he finishes his glass. The warm feeling has moved from his chest to his face. His cheeks are flush, and he feels light and happy. He and Magnus are standing in Magnus’s walk in closet, and Alec is dutifully attempting to understand the difference between a blouson and a racer, but missing most of Magnus’s carefully explained details about collar shape, due to the distraction of Magnus in colorful eyeshadow and low light. 

 

“Can I have another one of these?” Alec asks, holding up his empty glass. 

 

Magnus chuckles. “Maybe a weaker one this time.”  He brushes his thumb over Alec’s cheekbone. “I think that one went to your head a little.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be,” Alec replies. 

 

The glass in his hand refills. So does the glass in Magnus’s. 

 

“You should try this on,” Magnus says holding out one of the jackets. Alec should know what, style, but can only reliably identify the color. It is blue. 

 

Alec hands Magnus his drink and takes the jacket. “You just want to dress me up, don’t you?”

 

“Desperately,” Magnus replies. 

 

Alec laughs and slips the jacket on. Magnus pushes something on the shelf next to him, and somehow the shelf becomes a mirror. 

 

“It’s too big in the shoulders,” Magnus tuts. 

 

“All of your clothes are going to be too big in the shoulders,” Alec points out. 

 

With an eye roll and a shrug Magnus steps behind Alec and runs his hands over the shoulder seams. The fit of the jacket changes subtly. Alec can see Magnus make a face in the mirror. He brings his hands to the bottom of the jacket and pulls. The fabric of the jacket comes with his hands. 

 

“There. You look fantastic,” Magnus whispers. 

 

Alec feels his cheeks warm even further. “I can’t shoot an arrow in this.” He moves his arm, demonstrating his limited range of motion. Magnus walks from behind him, plucks his glass of whiskey up from the rack of shoes were he set it, and wanders down the length of one of racks of clothes housed by the closet. 

 

“What is there to shoot arrows at in here?” Magnus calls back. 

 

Alec grabs his own drink off the shelf. 

 

The man has a point. 

 

* * *

 

 

Alec had pictured becoming the Head of the New York Institute a thousand times, but had never imagined that he would spend the first night of his promotion like this. 

 

He’d never pictured staying up all night. Never pictured being with a boyfriend. Never thought it would be the first night he ever got drunk… and would not have been able to picture the outfit either. 

 

He’s wearing tight blue pants and a weird, mostly see through black shirt, open to his navel and draped over him in a way that would make him wonder how it doesn’t fall off if any single part of him wasn’t too drunk to care. Magnus had also put a couple necklaces and an ear cuff on him before his ear to ear grin had erupted into laughter. 

 

Alec grabs Magnus, pulls him close and kisses him again, not caring that Magnus is still laughing instead of really kissing back. 

 

“Okay,” Alec finally says. “Okay. My turn. It’s my turn to dress you up now.”

 

“I give you full run of the closet,” Magnus replies, waving a hand to indicate all the racks of clothes filling a room larger than Alec’s entire bedroom back at the Institute. 

 

Alec grins and bends down to the floor, grabbing his own black jeans and tee shirt off the ground. He holds them out to Magnus with a look of challenge. 

 

Magnus takes them, his grin turning a little mischievous as he does. 

 

“Go sit on the bed,” Magnus tells him. 

 

The closet door closes behind Alec as he walks out, and he catches his reflection in Magnus’s vanity. 

 

For anyone other than Magnus, it’s an extreme look. It’s not something Alec would ever let anyone but Magnus see, and still not an outfit Magnus could have talked him into before that second drink… but he finds himself unembarrassed by it. Here. Tonight.

 

Alec doesn’t think about clothes beyond utility. He wears all black because it doesn’t show stains and he can do all his laundry in one big bundle at the end of the week. He wears clothes he can fight in, that can be easily and cheaply replaced. 

 

He looks at himself and tries to see what Magnus sees in clothes. Entertainment. Expression. Power, maybe?

 

He adjusts the weird, drapey neck of the shirt he’s wearing. Yeah. He’d definitely felt some power in the way Magnus had looked at him after he’d put this shirt on. But that’s sure as hell not what he would feel if anyone at the Institute saw him in this get-up.

 

The closet door creaks open, and Magnus walks out. 

 

“Oh. Wow.” Alec manages. 

 

The tee-shirt is much too tight on him, and Magnus doesn’t seem to have used any magic to adjust the size the way he had on the clothes he’d put Alec in. The cheap cotton stretches over his chest, and something about the way his biceps curve out from the bottom of the sleeves is… mesmerizing. 

 

Alec has seen Magnus naked plenty of times. The hills and valleys of his torso, the curves of his arms, his back… _by the Angel, his back_ …. Are all familiar sights. 

 

But for some reason, having them poorly hidden under opaque black cotton is a revelation. 

 

It takes Alec several moments to realize that Magnus has adjusted the jeans to fit him. Alec’s jeans should be puddled around Magnus’s feet, but they aren’t. Which means he’s left the tee shirt like this on purpose. 

 

“It doesn’t exactly scream, “High Warlock of Brooklyn”,” Magnus says. “More… took a second job as a trainer at a gym next to a Sephora.”

 

Alec swallows. Nods. 

 

Magnus bites his lip. “Speaking… of Sephora.” He wiggles his eyebrows. 

 

“What’s a Sephora?” Alec asks. 

 

Magnus doesn’t answer. Instead he sweeps across the room, heading toward his vanity and catching Alec in his wake. Alec is already sitting in the chair in front of Magnus’s vanity before he realizes what Magnus wants. 

 

“No,” Alec shakes his head and holds out his hand. “No. No. Not makeup. That’s too much.”

 

“Too much?”

 

Alec points to the shirt he’s barely wearing. “I’ve got to draw a line somewhere. I really think I’ve been playing along here.”

 

“Yeah,” Magnus purrs, kneeling down next to Alec. “Playing. It’s just us. Having fun. Makeup is fun.” Magnus pulls open a drawer, and Alec is about to protest again, when Magnus pulls out something Alec recognizes from Isabelle’s disaster of a nightstand. 

 

Makeup wipes. 

 

Magnus sets the pack of wipes on the vanity counter, then pulls out an eyeliner pen, a little pot of black eye shadow, and a… thing of mascara. Alec doesn’t know what they’re called.

 

“Let’s switch. Let me put a little make up on you, and I’ll let you take mine off.”

 

“I’ve never seen you without makeup,” Alec says. The grogginess he’d been starting to feel is suddenly gone. There’s a crackling feeling between he and Magnus now, entirely unrelated to Magnus’s palms on Alec’s thighs. 

 

Alec would never have guessed how many different types of intimacy there are. 

 

“I know,” Magnus replies. 

 

Alec nods. Magnus picks up the make up, and the makeup wipes. A chair appears out of thin air and Magnus settles onto it. 

 

“Close your eyes.”

 

They’re both silent as Magnus works. The soft feeling of the brushes moving so cautiously over such a vulnerable spot is strangely soothing. Alec relaxes back against the chair, feeling the peace of absolute trust take over.  Even when Alec hears the drawer open again, and feels something soft move over his cheeks, he doesn’t say anything. Move. Open his eyes.

 

Until Magnus asks him to. Apparently you have to have your eyes open to put on mascara. 

 

Magnus smiles at him. “Do you want to see?”

 

“Not yet,” Alec says. He takes the make up wipes from the counter, opens the snap closure on the top and pulls a wipe out. Magnus’s eyes close, and Alec sets his hand to one side of Magnus’s face, holding him in place. 

 

Magnus stays still as Alec pulls the wipe gently across his eyelid. He’s worried that he might press too hard, but Magnus’s face stays calm. 

 

Trusting, in a way Alec knows he hasn’t deserved lately. 

 

He brings the wipe across Magnus’s eyes until the orange eyeshadow is gone. The black liner is gone. The mascara is gone. 

 

He stops.

 

“I wear foundation too,” Magnus says quietly, eyes still closed.

 

Alec retrieves another wipe, and moves it across Magnus’s forehead, over his cheeks, down the bridge of his nose and the point of his chin. A little bit of black comes away as Alec moves it over Magnus eyebrows and his goatee. 

 

He carefully cleans around the angles and curves of Magnus’s face until the last wipe comes away clean, then holds Magnus’s face between his hands, and stares. 

 

Magnus looks so… small. His eyebrows are a little thin, as is his goatee. He’s got a little patch of small red acne scars on one cheek. Alec wonders if they’ve been there for the hundreds and hundreds of years that have passed since Magnus must have gotten them.

 

The vulnerability in his eyes when they open takes Alec’s breath away, and he’s pulling him into a kiss before he can even catch it. 

 

Magnus kisses back, and for a moment, it feels like the last few days never happened. As though they had stood outside the Institute after Valentine’s massacre, said ‘I love you’ and then come right back here and spent the last few days ensconced in Magnus’s loft. Kissing, getting take out, drinking and making love, over and over again, with all of their responsibilities and faults unable to intrude.

 

“I love you,” Alec says. 

 

“I love you too.”


End file.
